


In Vino Veritas

by the_genderman



Series: Trans Steve 'Verse [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Catholic Guilt, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Trans Steve Rogers, but don't worry it's a lot nicer than the tags might suggest, due to alcohol consumption, mild internalized period-typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 02:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11175186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_genderman/pseuds/the_genderman
Summary: Steve gawped. Did Bucky really just proposition him? This wasn’t some kind of cosmic joke, was it? Three years of hoping that Bucky would notice,reallynotice, him. Three years of praying that he’d find someone more appropriate to fall in love with. Three years, and his stomach was doing the exact same flips it had done on the first day.





	In Vino Veritas

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: 1937ish. And just in case anyone wants to complain, legal drinking age in New York state was 18 between 1933 (end of Prohibition) and 1982.
> 
> Originally posted March of 2017 on Tumblr. Some minor word changes.
> 
> A note on language. I am a trans masculine author, and I am using the anatomical terminology I am most comfortable with for Steve. Different people may have different preferences and there is no one right way.

Steve looked up from the mending (his good Sunday jacket, split up the side from a scuffle after church last week) as the door opened. Bucky stepped inside, a little flushed and definitely a bit worse for alcohol.

“You missed dinner,” Steve said simply.

“I guess I did. Sorry ‘bout that, Stevie,” Bucky explained as he walked to the bedroom to change out of his work clothes. “George Kline, from work y’know, he’s gettin’ married tomorrow and the guys said we’d take him out to celebrate his last night as a free man. I couldn’t exactly say, no thanks I can’t go, I mean, he’s the boss’s son. Gotta keep the boss happy.”

“I understand, but if you knew this was happening, you could’ve warned me you weren’t gonna be home for dinner; I’d’ve just cooked for myself. I hate wasting food, and you know we can’t use the icebox right now because it doesn’t shut right. It’s July, Buck. It’s July and we have no icebox,” Steve said to the half-closed door. 

“Didn’t I tell you about the big to-do?” came Bucky’s voice.

“No, this is the first I’d heard of it.”

“Aw, ’m sorry Steve, I thought I’d said something. And I really will get to fixing the icebox, I’ve just gotta have time to sit down and figure out what’s wrong with it.”

There was a brief moment of silence.

“You didn’t really throw my dinner away, did you?” Bucky asked.

“No,” Steve admitted. “I was just trying to get you riled up for coming home late without saying anything. I took it down to Mrs. Hartimann. I thought, with the new baby, every little bit helps, right? I know I’m not a great cook, but it’s something.”

“You’re a good man, Stevie,” Bucky said, returning from the bedroom, now wearing a sleeveless undershirt and his rattiest house pants. He slouched down into their old wing chair, grimaced, and readjusted the broken spring.

“You gonna be sober for church tomorrow morning?” Steve asked, finishing the seam and tying the thread off. “If you miss again, your mama’s gonna hunt you down and drag you to confession herself.”

“I’m always sober on Sunday,” Bucky grinned. “And she won’t know I’m not there if you don’t tell her.”

“I haven’t said a word to her, she just _knows_.”

Bucky stretched his whole body, linking his fingers over his head and splaying his toes. “I’m beat. But enough about me. You get Saturdays off from the shop, right? So how was _your_ day?”

“Oh, pretty good. Thank you again for the birthday pencils. I went down to the Met, practiced my drawing on the classical sculptures, and then spent some time doing a whole lot of nothing.”

“I didn’t know you _could_ just relax and do ‘a whole lot of nothing.’ You get so tetchy when you’re laid up sick.”

“That’s because I hate being sick. If I have things to do but choose not to do them, that’s different from having things to do and not being able to do them.”

Bucky shrugged. “So, did you go to the museum alone or did you take what’s-her-face along with you?”

“What’s-her-face?” Steve asked dryly.

“You know, the blonde I introduced you to last weekend.”

“Eileen?”

“Yeah, her. You two been on a proper date yet?”

“Nah,” Steve said with some irritation. “She stopped by the store on Thursday and told me that she’s sorry, but we’re not ‘compatible’.”

“She dumped you before you even got to the dancing part? That’s rough,” Bucky replied sympathetically. “And what’d she mean by ‘compatible’? You don’t usually figure that out until you’ve actually been on a date or two.”

“I dunno, she probably found out about me somehow,” Steve shrugged.

“Found out what about you? You don’t have any secrets.”

Steve just stared at Bucky.

Bucky stared back, trying to figure out what Steve was getting at.

“Oh!” Bucky finally said. “Right. _That_.”

“Yeah, _that_ ,” Steve echoed.

“I’ll ask around for ya. Discreetly,” Bucky said. “There’s dames who like that kinda thing, y’know.”

“Yeah, but they also tend to like women, and I’m not a woman.”

“I know that, Stevie,” Bucky said, a little peevishly. “You _know_ I know that.”

“Yeah, but not everyone’s as understanding as you are. Even my own mother, God rest her soul, wasn’t too thrilled about me doing this. She finally gave in because she knew it made _me_ happy, but I could tell _she_ wasn’t too happy about it.”

Steve got up and walked to the bedroom to hang his jacket back up. When he turned back, Bucky was standing in the door, leaning casually against the jamb. Bucky scratched at his side, fingers rucking the fabric of his undershirt and revealing a stripe of skin between the shirt and the waist of his pants.

“So I’m 0-and-2 with you this week,” Bucky said. “Wanna give me another pitch to swing at?”

“Can’t pitch to you if I don’t know where your strike zone is,” Steve countered. “What are you getting at?”

“Well,” Bucky said, ducking his head a little. (Was he actually blushing or was that just from the alcohol?) “I was thinking, maybe, if you wanted, I could help you out some.”

“‘Help me out’?” Steve repeated questioningly. He raised one eyebrow.

“You know,” Bucky said, shuffling his feet. “Help you out. Like, in the ‘can’t get a date and need a little _somethin_ ‘’ kind of way.”

Steve gawped. Did Bucky really just proposition him? This wasn’t some kind of cosmic joke, was it? Three years of hoping that Bucky would notice, _really_ notice, him. Three years of praying that he’d find someone more appropriate to fall in love with. Three years, and his stomach was doing the exact same flips it had done on the first day.

“Just how drunk _are_ you?” Steve said, forcing a laugh.

“Not so drunk that I don’t know what I’m sayin’,” Bucky answered quickly. 

Steve tried to speak but his mouth wouldn’t work. 

“…But if you don’t want that kinda thing from me,” Bucky said, a little slower, “we can say it’s just the whisky talking and, uh, move on.”

“No, wait.” Steve finally found his words.

“You taking me up on that offer?” Bucky’s eyes lit up.

“I want to talk about it first,” Steve said cautiously. 

Steve wondered. Was this what they referred to as ‘ _in vino veritas_ ’? Where you got a little drunk and started admitting your innermost feelings?

“What’s to talk about?” Bucky said, sidling up next to Steve.

Steve put his hand on Bucky’s arm, gently but firmly holding him back.

“You’re drunk. You say you know what you’re saying, but what happens when you’re sober again? What happens when you wake up tomorrow and realize that you’ve– that we’ve– I don’t know, what did you even have in mind?”

“We can do whatever you want, Stevie. I just want you to be happy. You deserve that. And if Eileen can’t see _you_ , then that’s her loss. And my gain,” Bucky finished with a chuckle. He took Steve’s hand off his arm and held it in his own.

“You must have have had _something_ in mind or you wouldn’t have offered,” Steve said, sitting down on the edge of Bucky’s bed. Bucky sat down next to him, still holding his hand.

“Well…” Bucky started.

“Well what?” Steve teased gently. “I’ve never known you to get this tongue-tied before.”

“I mean, I know what I like, and I know what the dames I’ve been with tell me they like, but I don’t know about you. You’re not a dame, but you’ve got the same downstairs as them, right? 

Steve hesitated. Bucky squeezed his hand.

“Yes, I do,” Steve finally said. “And I don’t know if I’m saying this right, but I don’t want to use it like them. I don’t like the idea of being the girl in… whatever happens.”

Bucky nodded. “I think I understand. You don’t want anything inside you?” Steve nodded silently. “Ok, I gotcha. Don’t you worry about a thing, Stevie. I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve than just the ol’ in-n-out.”

Bucky let go of Steve’s hand and gripped the loose neck of his undershirt, pulling it over his head. He moved on to his pants, slipping them off and tossing them onto the chair in the corner where they promptly slithered off onto the floor. Steve bit his tongue and decided _not_ to get on him about not putting his clothes away properly. This wasn’t the time for that.

Steve had caught the occasional glimpse of Bucky naked, it was inevitable, living together in such cramped quarters, but he hadn’t _really_ looked. It was rude to stare. It was especially rude for a man to stare like that at another man. Didn’t mean he didn’t _want_ to stare, though, and by all the angels in heaven, he was staring now. Bucky was slim but deceptively well-muscled from hauling cargo at the docks six days a week. There was a smattering of dark hair across his chest and another thin line of hair peeking out over the waistband of his underwear and trailing upwards towards his navel. 

Bucky noticed Steve watching him. “And here I was, thinking you liked dames.”

“I do,” Steve responded. “A lot. Just haven’t had much experience with ‘em. And that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good-looking man, too. They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Bucky nodded and made an indeterminate noise before stepping out of his underwear.

“C’mon Steve, I showed you mine, now you show me yours,” Bucky said, sitting down on the edge of his bed, leaning slightly back and bracing himself on his hands. “Take your shirt and pants off and lemme see what you really look like under there.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep my shirt on,” Steve said.

“Alright, whatever makes you happy.”

Steve stood up and unbuttoned his pants, letting them drop to the floor. The fine blond hairs on his legs were barely visible. He inhaled deeply, held the breath, then exhaled and took off his underwear, too. He tried not to think about how different he was from Bucky. Bucky, whose legs were slightly splayed, was giving Steve a pretty good view. His penis was flaccid, pinkish and a little wrinkled, nicely proportioned and laying limply over top of his balls. Steve looked down at his own crotch, all neat and small and self-contained under the fuzz of blond. 

For a brief moment, Steve thought about chickening out and telling Bucky that he had changed his mind. His hand moved to cover himself. He did but he didn’t want this. He wanted Bucky, but he didn’t want Bucky to want _this_ body. He looked back up. Bucky was still sitting exactly the same (well, maybe he was listing a little more to the left than he had been, but that could be blamed on the alcohol), waiting patiently. He wasn’t leering, he wasn’t ogling, he was just taking in the view and waiting for Steve to make the first move. He wasn’t even touching himself; his hands were still slightly behind him where they had been since he had sat down.

“It’s ok, Stevie. It’s ok. I don’t mind what you do or don’t have, you’re still you.”

“That’s not it, Buck. I wasn’t afraid, not really, that you wouldn’t accept it. It’s more that _I_ can’t accept it. It’s not what I’m supposed to have and I’m reminded about it every damn day,” Steve spat.

“Well, you weren’t supposed to have bad lungs or be deaf in one ear or not be able to see the difference between a good red apple and a sour green one, but you’re sure making do with that lot. Would you maybe be able to treat it like one of those things? Like when the world said ‘We’re gonna make this one a cripple’ and you looked the world in the eyes and said ‘No you won’t’.”

Steve screwed up his face, a little annoyed and maybe a little angry that Bucky would suggest that he could _just get over_ something like this. But really, he did have a point. The same point his mom had made every time she told him, every time the world knocks you down, you be sure you stand back up. The same point he had made to himself every time someone had told him, ‘no, you won’t be able to do that.’ Just because he couldn’t control the circumstances that got him to this point, didn’t mean he couldn’t take the wheel and steer his life in the direction that he wanted it to go.

“I just can’t keep my big mouth shut, can I?” Bucky said with a hint of a self-deprecating laugh. “I always say the wrong thing and mess everything up. If we had a proper couch and not that short little two-seater thing, I’d probably go slink off with my tail between my legs and go sleep there tonight.”

“Not so fast,” Steve said. “You’re probably right. _Probably_. And if you’re not good at keeping your mouth shut, I’ve got an idea of where it can go.”

“Steve, you’re making me blush!” Bucky said with a proper laugh, clapping a hand to his chest in mock affront. “I didn’t think you _knew_ about those kindsa things.”

“Just because I’ve never _done_ it doesn’t mean I haven’t heard of it.”

“Well then, mister book-smarts, c’mon and lie down and get yourself comfortable. I’m gonna give you some real-world education,” Bucky said and scooted himself down to the foot of the bed to make room for Steve.

Steve’s stomach flipped again, feeling a little like he had swallowed a handful of pins. He was really doing this. He was really doing this _with Bucky_. He quickly stepped forward and climbed onto Bucky’s bed. He fluffed the pillow as best as it would take, placed it between his head and the headboard, and scooted up to make as much room for Bucky as he could. 

“You ready?” Bucky asked.

Moment of truth.

“Yeah, I’m ready,” Steve said, spreading his legs and letting his heels hang just off either side of the mattress.

“I promise, you will not be disappointed,” Bucky said, lying down flat on his stomach between Steve’s legs.

“You sure you’re gonna be comfortable laying like that?” Steve asked.

“You ever come across the phrase ‘whisky dick’ in your dirty book-learning?” Bucky asked succinctly.

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Tonight’s all about you, Stevie.”

With that, Bucky ducked down, placed his hands on Steve’s thighs, and licked gently over his vulva. Bucky repeated this move a few more times, each time pressing a little harder until his tongue slid between the labia. Steve shivered at the sensation. _Something_ down there began to throb. He wasn’t quite sure what part or parts were excited, but it or they were insistent that this was something very good.

“Oo we’ fo’ ‘e, Thteve?” Bucky said rather indistinctly, not having removed his tongue from between Steve’s labia.

“I can’t understand a word you’re sayi-hnngg,” Steve began, but he was cut off mid-sentence as Bucky found a particularly good spot. He groaned and grabbed at the sheets. Steve felt Bucky’s tongue moving over the opening to his vagina, but true to his word, he didn’t try to work his way past the muscles keeping it shut, just brushed past.

The throb grew steadily stronger as Bucky continued to work Steve up. Not too slow, but steady, building a good sort of tension. Steve’s right hand hovered hesitantly by his hip. He really wanted to run his fingers through Bucky’s hair, but he wasn’t sure if that was something he was allowed to do. Bucky quickly put that idea (and most everything else) out of Steve’s mind by finally making his way to his clitoris. Steve gasped and twitched and arched his back, clutching at the mattress with his heels and digging his fingers further into the sheets. Ok, maybe there were _some_ good things about this body of his. He actually _whined_ as Bucky began to suck at his clit.

“Sweet Mother of God…” Steve moaned. 

Bucky laughed a little. That, too, was a good sensation.

Steve found himself tipped abruptly over the edge as Bucky decided to somehow combine sucking _and_ licking, the tip of his tongue barely fluttering over the head of his clit. Steve moaned something that was trying and failing to be words as the orgasm shook him. Panting, he batted clumsily at Bucky’s head to let him know he was finished.

“Ok, ok, Buck, that’s good. I’m good. Oh, wow. I’m good,” Steve gasped.

Bucky pulled back, eyes half closed and smiling like a cat. 

“I told you I knew a few tricks,” Bucky said, fighting off a yawn.

“Oh, you sure do,” Steve said a little blurrily. “Now you get your pajamas on and go brush your teeth.”

“What if I wanna remember the way you taste?”

“Yeah, well you’re gonna have terrible morning breath if you don’t, so go brush.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bucky walked off to the sink, still naked. Steve changed quickly into his pajamas and half considered going to bed without brushing his own teeth. He felt good; relaxed and a little floaty and all he wanted to do now was lay down and fall asleep.

\-------------------------

Steve woke with the sun the next morning, crossed their narrow room and gently shook Bucky awake. Bucky groaned and pressed his face into his pillow.

“Come on Buck, you gotta get up for church. You don’t want your mama coming after you, do you?”

“Ugh, my head,” Bucky mumbled.

“I thought you said you were always sober on Sunday?” Steve teased.

“I _am_ sober. Hungover isn’t technically drunk anymore,” Bucky said, groaning again as he turned over and the light hit his eyes. “I must have had a pretty good night to have this rough of a morning.”

“Don’t remember it?” Steve queried.

“Not really. Bits and pieces. I know some of the guys and me went out for drinks, but it got kinda fuzzy after that.”

Bucky paused, eyeing Steve.

“You look like you had a pretty good night, too. You go home with that dame I introduced you to, Elizabeth or Eileen or Emily or whatever her name was?”

“Why do you say that?” Steve asked.

Have you looked in the mirror yet this morning, Steve?” Bucky asked. “You’ve got that ‘I finally got laid and I’m proud as hell’ look on your face.”

“Her name was Eileen, and no, she broke up with me on Thursday. It wasn’t her,” Steve admitted.

“Alright, so you met someone on your own, good on you. Who is she? Do I know her?”

Steve was silent, not sure how to answer. Did Bucky _really_ not remember? He didn’t know Bucky to lose time after drinking, but he also didn’t think Bucky would carry a joke this far. Then again, he didn’t know just how much drinking had happened, nor had he ever been pushed to test Bucky’s alcohol tolerance.

“Come on, Stevie, you can’t play coy with me now, who was she?” Bucky wheedled.

“He,” Steve finally said, as quietly as he could while still speaking loud enough for Bucky to hear. He didn’t want to _lie_ to Bucky, but he could leave out a few details.

“‘He’?” Bucky said with mild disbelief, sitting up to look Steve in the eyes. “Stevie. Don’t tell me you were so desperate that you settled for some jerk who thought you were a dame.”

“I don’t know, he might’ve.”

“‘Might’ve’,” Bucky scoffed. “You aren’t gonna go back to him, are you? You deserve someone who’s gonna treat you right.”

“I know I do.”

“Good. You want me to keep looking, try to find you a dame who’ll like you for you? I know they’ve _got_ to exist.”

“You don’t have to go out for your way for me, Buck.”

“I know, but I want to. I just want you to be happy.”

“Thanks.”

Steve took his church clothes off of the clothes rail, glad to be momentarily turned away from Bucky. He was disappointed that Bucky didn’t remember last night, but at least _he_ had that memory. Whatever may happen, he’d have that.


End file.
